


The Poetics of Outer Space

by lolcano



Series: We Need New Stories [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Gen, Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), mostly just navel-gazing XD, narratives, or something like that, sort of..., the enduring legacy of words, the power of stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-24 23:57:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13822167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lolcano/pseuds/lolcano
Summary: It is darkness painted with light; stardust that smears across a pure black palette, it is radiant, shimmering sheens of brilliant colours.This is outer space, and in the midst of it all there is a ship and two brothers who look out over the stars and remember.(AU that ignores the end credit scene)





	The Poetics of Outer Space

It is night-time, and it is quiet, and Thor looks out over the stars. Then again, it is not as if there is any night and day in this place. There is no sun that rises in the morning and falls again in the evening, only the omnipresent stars which gleam in the distance all around them. Yet even so it is night-time, for he ordained it to be so, he determined that the lights would be dimmed after such and such a time, the bunks would be divided in such and such a way, such and such people would stay awake to maintain the ship, night would last however so many hours long, then the people would awake once more at such and such a time and a new day would begin. He has spent all day making such decisions and ruling on such decisions. Yet it is not how he ever imagined it would be like to rule.

When he was young, he had thought kingship would be a series of glorious battles, interrupted only by great feasts and revelry.

He had thought it would be like the stories he had heard in his youth. It was stories like that he had tried to imitate once. Once there had been a great king who had defeated ten thousands of enemies with nothing but the jawbone of a dragon. Once there had been a great warrior who had gouged out the eyeballs of the villainous king with nothing but a fork. Once there was a great king who led forth his people in glorious battle and vanquished all his enemies. And so on and so forth. Even now the stories still resonated within him; they had echoed in the great feast halls, tales of extraordinary feats and great deeds, they had inspired in him courage and bravery, and yet also he realized that real life was not like that at all, that these kings and heroes were not all quite what they were cracked up to be.

No, kingship was not just proven in battle and revelry. It was not the battle itself but the moments after a battle when the smoke faded and the people reeled from their losses and they looked to him, him, for strength and guidance and hope, that is what made a king. It was not in the revelry itself but the moment before the feast, planning and preparing, preparing for this feast which would give his people joy. He had learned it is not the mighty deed itself but the time in between that gave life its worth, the time spent (for example) sitting around a fire with someone you loved, looking up at the stars.

He looks out the window of the ship and space is so astonishingly close. She would have been amazed to see it. Only a pane of glass separates him from the heavens, the heavens which encircle the ship like a diadem. It is a darkness painted upon with light; stardust smears across the pure black palette, radiant sheets of light swell against the swirling pinpoints of stars, and the sky shimmers and bursts in thousands of colours.

From the doorway, Loki watches his brother as he stands alone in front of that great glass window. He stands there quietly and peacefully, entranced by the beauty of outer space. He has changed, Loki thinks, and he keeps changing and there was something melancholy about that, how he somehow always manages to keep ahead of him. But is it his imagination, or does Thor look almost small, framed there against the window, overlooking the greatness of space? His brother, who once seemed so big?

But then, it should not be so surprising. Outer space to them is like they are to humans. One could travel for a lifetime through its darkness and still come no closer to its end than when they had first begun. Cold, terrifying and empty - that was outer space. And they are there in the midst of it and Loki can feel its coldness, its emptiness, seeping into him and -

"I never realized how beautiful the stars could be," says Thor. Loki looks at him. His brother has turned, half-facing him, watching him, his arms open as if inviting him towards his side.

And Loki steps forward, slowly and thoughtfully, as if still turning over the words in his head. "Ye-es. They are, aren't they," he says.

They really are beautiful, the stars. He had always thought so. They cover the whole wall, direct and intimate and yet so very far away. Just as they were, back then. They studded the sky like diamonds, spread out in the sky like jewels, beautiful objects made of gold and silver "stored in heaven's vault" as the famous poem went. That particular phrase from that particular poem, which he had learned early on in his youth, had, for whatever reason, always stuck with him. Heaven's vault, where stardust spilled out like tapestries and galaxies spread out like silver necklaces, that sort of vault, but also something vaulting upwards, high and lofty, rising eternally above them, a "treasure unbearably beautiful, seen by all but grasped by none."

These words he had learned so long ago; sitting there with his brother learning poetry. They had sat there close together, close together as they stand together now, and listened to the words of the great Asgardian epics, the ancient songs and legends of their people. Of course Thor had only been interested in the battles, all the gory details like people's eyes being stabbed with forks or intestines spilling out or cities being razed to the ground (all of which happened with astonishing frequency), but for Loki it had been the words themselves which resonated within him, the form and breadth of the phrase, meanings reflecting upon themselves like mirrors upon mirrors, echoing and echoing over and within each other without end. They are words that enter into your heart and eyes and psyche, and you can never see the world the same way again.

Yes, it had been the same turn of phrase, the same metaphor for the heavens which had risen unbidden to his mind back then too, when he had stood there beneath the great vault of heaven which rose above him nakedly and vertiginously, the unbearable beauty of the stars so close and yet so far. He had stood there beneath those craggy spires, cold and alone, and he had longed for the stars, for that one celestial speck in the heavens in particular... Could he see it? That planet which should have been his birth-right? Which instead had cast him out, a stranger in a foreign land? Why? Oh how he longed... And yet it was so far away, unattainably far. And in between them was this vast empty space, vaulting high above him. How terrible it was, that great emptiness of space. A gash, an emptiness, above him, where you could fall and fall forever. He could feel himself falling deeper into that darkness, wrapping it around himself like a cloak. A nothingness, a coldness; this was his inheritance. He feels cold as he looks over it again. Then he feels his brother at his side. Heaven's vault, rising high above them. He wonders if Thor remembers that story too.

So he asks: “Do you remember how the stars were made?"

“Particles colliding,” says Thor, "Slowly they form their own mass, and eventually begin to fuse Right?"

Technically speaking that was true. Stars burning and dying and forming new life from the ashes of the old, over and over again.

“No, I mean..." he tries again, "The story with the dwarves.”

Thor pauses and thinks. "Ah right," he says.

It is said that the stars had once belonged to the red dwarves. They had been great craftsmen; they had created works of unbearable beauty. They amassed great treasure, but no matter how much beauty they surrounded themselves with, they could never fill up the ugliness which was within. They were greedy and cruel, and kept their riches solely to themselves. Or so the story goes.

Thor remembers hearing the tale as a child, in lessons and in song - how the mighty Aesir army had vanquished a cruel and desolate people. The greedy dwarves, who amassed piles and piles of riches which wasted away in deep treasure-stores beneath the earth. There had been many great heroes in that war, whose mighty deeds were still spoken to this day. He had loved to hear about how the brave warrior B* threw his spear and hit the enemy king, there upon the hill. One hundred meters away, he had stood, and yet he had thrown with such accuracy and might that he hit the king directly in the heart, picking him out from the featureless masses of enemies by the glimmer of his crown.

After the king had fallen the people fell into a panic and were quickly routed. But the queen waited and watched. From the palace she watched her people die, her kingdom burning with the flames of war. Soon the Aesir would arrive and they would take their treasure as their own, all their gold and silver, their golden buckles and silver goblets, their carved horns of ivory and lampstands. It was time to act. Gathering together their treasure, all the great riches of their kingdom, she used an ancient magic unique to her people and hid away the great riches of the dwarves in a place that no one could reach.

She hid them in the heavens, and when you look up into the sky at night you can still see them even to this very day. This is how the stars were made. It was the dwarves' final act of greed; they hid away their treasure in a place no one could reach.

And yet, perhaps, it was also a gift, Loki thought, a final act of love for her people, for all people. She hid away their treasure not within the recesses of the earth but in the splendour of the sky where all could see. Even the lonely, the exile, he who stood beneath the throne of the eternal and looked up at the eternal heavens, even him, the stars watched over him. Perhaps that is why the queen hide them in the sky, for she knew that she too would soon be the dispossessed, torn from her homeland, alone. Her magic depleted, her kingdom vanquished, she was taken prisoner by the Aesir, in chains she left his kingdom, her home, her people, which were no more. But the stars, the stars remained and in them, she could see her home. How bittersweet their sight must have been!

Can they see their homeland too, amidst that bejeweled sky? Is Asgard out there somewhere still? What is that faint speck of red in the distance? Can it be the fast-fading embers of a once-great nation? Or perhaps there is no longer any trace of it at all; perhaps by now it had had utterly burnt up, maybe now it was nothing but ashes, dissipated into darkness, swirling particles which would someday be a star. Is their homeland now just a gaping darkness in the sky?

"And the queen looked out upon the kingdom of the dwarves, and behold, it was no more." Loki says it quietly, the words from the poem, and for some time neither of them speak, the words echoing, echoing.

It could be theirs now, too, those words. Yet Loki had never wanted those words. Not the words of the foreign queen. He had wanted to be Asgard, Asgard the mighty, the conqueror, the vanquisher, not the vanquished. Even when he had stood there beneath the nearfar stars, how he had resented his position. He wanted to find other words, _those_ words, he had wanted to be like the great warrior who had flung his spear at the king from a thousand miles away, he had wanted to be like _him_. But now it really is their words, all their words, for behold, Asgard was no more.

"It's funny," said Thor, "I never paid much attention to that part. The destruction."

And yet once he would not have questioned it. It had seemed natural to him, that to be a king was to wage war, to wage glorious battle, to raze cities and cut down enemies. But now...

"For what reason did they attack them?” He had always thought it was nothing but a legend. But perhaps there was a truth to it. Perhaps it had taken place in a different time. A time that had been hidden from him.

"Do you need a reason for war?" says Loki, "They were greedy, ugly... monsters."

"Maybe... but maybe they weren't,” Thor says. He speaks slowly, as if the thought is just occurring to him, although perhaps he has known it for long time, "Maybe it was us who were greedy. I am beginning to understand brother, what it feels like to have everything you have ever known fall out from beneath your feet."

"Do you? Do you really?" He speaks bitterly, but Thor continues even so.

“Our father taught us a true king does not seek out war, and yet he hid from us the origins of our own kingdom. Asgard was founded upon destruction, and our stories reflect those same ideals. But maybe... it's time to move away from lies and falsehood. I will be a different sort of king. It is time for us to find new stories.”

“Stories are falsehoods, brother," says Loki.

"They don't have to be."

He pauses. Together they look out over the heavens.

"Do you remember what our mother used to tell us about space?" Thor says at last.

“Yes…” said Loki, and as he speaks he can hear his mother’s voice within his words, echoing and echoing, “It is nothing, and yet it is everything. There really is nothing – no air, no life, it is darkness... hopelessness..." Loki trails off.  "And yet it is everything. It contains everything. Asgard, Vanaheim, Midgard and... Jotenheim....like leaves upon a branch, all of us, connected by the world tree.”

He remembered his parents teaching him this, his mother holding him close that night as they looked up at the stars; the nine realms and all the foreign nations, they were all cradled in that same vast expanse, Yggdrasil, the world tree. He stands there with his brother and together they are reflected in the window, light and dark, inversions of each other. But connected all the same.

He stands there with his brother as they had once stood as children, listening to the great legends of Asgard and the words had resonated within him, he had breathed in the form and breadth of the phrase, meanings reflecting upon themselves like mirrors upon mirrors, echoing and echoing over and within each other without end. They are words that enter into your heart and eyes and psyche, and you can never see the world the same way again. They cradle you in their arms like Yggdrisal, they sprout up within you and carry you in its branches. They had sprung from the same root, his brother and him. They had been watered with the same words and stories. There was no escaping it. His story and his brother's story; they were inexplicably entwined. One could not exist without the other. Did that make him bitter? Maybe. And yet it was his story too. He wasn't going to stay behind any longer. He would run and catch up as he changed and kept changing. He had changed too. He had saved his homeland even as he destroyed it, he was the vanquished and the vanquisher, the queen who threw away her treasure and yet kept it forever, even to this day. Here was their treasure, not in Asgard, but here within the vault of heaven... And they were tied together now into the same story, all of them, on this ship. It was a new story, which they were telling at this very moment. What would it be like, this story? Perhaps someday they would tell legends of him too. And this time maybe he could be the hero.

He had once thought a being a king was a series of glorious battles and revelry, of conquest and bloodshed and heroic deeds. But it wasn't like that at all. He had learned to take the time to look out over the stars. He had learned that from Jane, from the Avengers, and he remembers this again now, standing with his brother surrounded by an array of stars, outer space in all its splendour.

And tomorrow another day would begin - not that they had days in this place, or night, in this place surrounded by stars. And tomorrow he would have to make a hundred new decisions, minute decisions, ensuring that this and that was in order and such and such a thing will run and they would all be safe, carried together in this ship like a cradle. It was not the sorts of decisions that bards will sing about, that the legends would speak about. It is decisions he might have once found empty but which now he knew contained so very much indeed.

And the ship floated through the stars, in that great space between nothing and everything, and the two brothers peered out over the heavens, their thoughts echoing out into the expanse.

**Author's Note:**

> A prologue of sorts for a somewhat larger series. Thanks so much for reading! It is a rather self-indulgent fic. Obviously the stories they are referencing are just made up. I don't know what kind of legends a place like Asgard might have, but they must have some, mustn't they? So I made them up. Please stay tuned for the next instalment in the series, which continues upon the same sort of pointless and rambling vein.


End file.
